


Crush Talk Emergency!!

by Manaya_Karyam



Category: Kill la Kill
Genre: F/F, Fluff, contains adorable cuddles and smooches, not a crossover but extra hilarious if you know dangan ronpa, sorta post-canon; sorta normal-world-AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-28
Updated: 2016-06-28
Packaged: 2018-07-18 18:48:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7326193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manaya_Karyam/pseuds/Manaya_Karyam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A girl with the sheer audacity to dance on the edge of revealing her crush - so this is the woman who was able to conquer every school in the region!<br/>Tonight, our heroes finally have the chance to just be seventeen. But whether in love or war, some people can’t resist turning things up to 11.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Who Is She?

Incredibly, they’d got her to open up. Satsuki’s fraction of a smile was like a little crack letting warmth out. In his head, Ira could imagine narrating this moment as if on the sidelines of a fight: ‘Don’t be fooled. If I know anything about Lady Satsuki, it’s that she can’t be budged through mere badgering. If she tells us anything, it’s because she _wants_ to.’

“If I’m being honest,” Satsuki said, “I think her voice is really wonderful. How she doesn’t really try to control it, and it can get almost squeaky and unladylike, and that just makes it a better expression of her personality.”

Ryuko raised her eyebrows. “Y’do realize all that stuff would normally sound like an insult?”

Satsuki just raised her eyebrows back.

“Crushes work in mysterious ways,” Ira said, like he was some kinda expert.

“They baffle modern science,” agreed deadpan Satsuki.

“Well, what else??” prompted instigator/investigator Mako.

…Oh, sorry, we don’t have a setting yet. Well, consider it sleepover. They’ve been watching movies, eating snacks. Consider it a party. It’s just the four of them here, with others elsewhere in the house. Mako & Ira & Ryuko & Satsuki arranged on the mix of beds and couches and futons that everyone’s gonna sleep on later. In pajamas. And the fairies of the moonlight had said to Mako and everyone, ‘time to bug your friends about their love lives and try to dip your fingers in some drama and some intrigue, sound like fun?’ and Mako was like, ‘yeah, sounds like fun!!!1!’ So anyway;

“She’s powerful,” said Satsuki, “and so stylish when she fights. All others, when they fight, create a cacophony of awkward, unruly noises, but she alone creates the opposite. Even someone who didn’t have a crush on her would find that amazing.” She looked at them as if for confirmation, and… got it to varying degrees. Ryuko’s smile was tinged with hints of an Excalibur face.

“Haha don’t worry about that!” Mako blurted. “This is about how _you_ feel!”

“Of course. Well, in addition… there is her unassailable attitude of superiority toward those she wishes to subjugate.”

“This is getting a little fascist,” warned Ryuko.

“Oh. Sorry. I just mean; she’s so stable. Authoritative. Without being rigidly serious like me, she is yet totally sure of her intention and presentation. She is so… _composed._ ”

If you squinted, you could just barely see Satsuki’s emotions – affection, happiness, wishfulness – happening under her skin. Ryuko thought it was kinda fascinating. Satsuki and Mako were each Ryuko’s opposite, it two totally different ways.

“Aaaand? What else??” demanded Mako, endearingly obnoxious.

“Well. I think her pink hair is terribly cute. And her skeleton motif. And there’s the way she –“

 _“Ooooh, WHO are we talking about?”_ Nonon pounced into the room.

Everyone froze.

 _This moment can’t be lasting this long,_ thought Ryuko, as nothing happened yet.

Time snapped back as soon as Satsuki spoke; it had only been a second.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you right now,” she said to Nonon. “Maybe later tonight. I apologize.”

Nonon pouted.

“No, but really, I don’t want you to feel left out. Stay with us. Maybe I can tell you later.”

As Nonon came in to sit with them, the temperature seemed to rise for everyone except Satsuki. She played it completely cool.

_She’s just going to… keep talking about who she likes? In front of who she likes? Anonymously???_

_So this is the woman who was able to conquer every school in the region,_ thought Ryuko in awe.

“So this is someone you have a big ol’ _crush_ on?” prodded Nonon, obnoxiously endearing.

Satsuki nodded, eyes closed and smiling slightly like she was graciously losing a bet.

“I have _never_ known you to have a crush,” said Nonon. “Sir Toad, have you ever known her to?”

“No,” said Ira.

“Well, _tell_ me about her!” Nonon demanded with the voyeuristic interest universal to caring friends who know it’s okay to aggravate each other a bit.

Everyone held their breath. She wasn’t _really_ gonna try to -

“I’ve known her for a long time,” Satsuki began, while Ira, Mako, and Ryuko silently exploded. “At first I never thought of her as my equal,” she continued, “but I have been impressed by her too many times to count. She is loud and brash, and yet at all times thinking, never making a truly uncalculated move.  When I watch her being herself, I just fe- I f-“

She paused.

_Feel?_

“…find myself fascinated.”

Satsuki looked at Nonon who, like the rest of the room, was staring fixedly at Satsuki’s face, feeling like they’d just sighted the cryptid of Satsuki’s feelings, and come away with only a blurry, unconvincing photograph.

Nonon shook herself back to normal. “Well jeez, I’m _so_ curious now. You sure you can’t tell me? Whisper it in my ear. Come on.”

“Not yet, Ms. Jakuzure. Now I’m wondering if you yourself have a crush.”

“Hahaha… maybe. You want me to tell you about her?”

“I would like that very much.”

Mako’s face had gone red as she tried to keep from hyperventilating. _They were sitting so close together now – did Nonon_ know? _Were they flirting on purpose? Was only one of them? HOW WERE THEY SO CALM?_ She met Ira’s eyes – they both echoed each other’s tightly constrained maelstrom of confusion.

 _Keep it together, Mankanshoku,_ he mindbeamed. _For the sake of saving Lady Satsuki from embarrassment!_

Ryuko, meanwhile, had the aspect of someone both amazed and highly entertained by a shockingly dangerous circus act.

“ _My_ crush,” said Nonon, “my mystery crush, is gorgeous as hell. These intense, piercing eyes. Scary, honestly. And their legs are something else. And their fighting style is this perfect balance of fluid and solid, it’s honestly such an experience to watch. They’re just impressive in a lot of ways. Honestly, _everyone_ thinks they’re amazing, even people who don’t have a crush on them. I know that a lot of people like them in a lot of ways, but I wonder if maybe I’m the only one who wants to date them as an equal.” Nonon grinned. “I’m telling you, Satsuki Kiryuin…” (Mako let out a soft gasp.) “…people like that aren’t around every corner.”

 _“But who is it?”_ squeaked/shrieked Mako. Amused, Ryuko held her hand to lend her some chill, a job which didn’t normally fall to her.

Nonon looked at the three onlookers in turn playfully. “Well, it’s a name you all know. It starts with an S…”

_Okay, she’s playing with us. She HAS to be playing with us. There’s no way she doesn’t know –_

_But why is she being so affectionate with Satsuki? If Satsuki is really her crush, but they haven’t confirmed to each other yet, then she would be at least a little nervous about overstepping her bounds, she would be a little paranoid about it, so if she’s acting totally familiar then she must think she has nothing at stake, she CAN’T know –_

“I’ll tell you mine,” said Satsuki slowly, “if you tell me yours.”

And Ira knew in his gut that Satsuki had deliberately weighed the evidence, had judged exactly how well she matched Nonon’s description, had come up with an estimate probability, had decided to take this risk after analytic consideration. And he thought that was amazing. And somewhere, deeper down and less certain, he thought perhaps it was horribly sad that everything in Satsuki’s life was a game of strategy, even this.

Or maybe it was good. Maybe that was how she _ought_ to be.

As Nonon agreed to the deal, the hairs on Ira’s neck prickled; he felt like all the energy and potential of the night was charging into an expanding star right between the two girls. He looked at Mako, and then Ryuko. It was like being in the Manhattan Project and testing the atomic bomb. Yes, we’re the ones who brought us to this point, but now we can only watch. Yes, it is so big, so intense, but it is so far away. I’m looking straight at it, but it is so far away. He held his breath.

Mako, for her part, was swimming in a preemptive sadness for if Nonon said someone other than Satsuki. There would be no explosion, just the air let out of a balloon. There would be no excitement, no intensity, whether good or bad; because at the moment the romance failed to happen, they would have to stop making it such a big deal. It would just be a little sad. And it wouldn’t really matter very much. The worst ending is not when things are bad, but when things don’t matter. And Mako knew that that probably _wouldn’t happen,_ but in some small, silly way, the mere possibility of it felt far too sad.

Ryuko, meanwhile, wasn’t taking this super seriously. She thought it was pretty exciting, but she was cool either way.

“Ready?” said Satsuki.

Nonon looked at her and took a deep breath. And then she said,


	2. Machine Gun Talk Battle

“Sanageyama.”

“IT’S A MISDIRECTION!” bellowed Ira, before he even had time to think. “SHE ALREADY USED FEMALE PRONOUNS AT ONE POINT, SO SANAGEYAMA MUST NOT BE THE REAL ANSWER!”

Satsuki’s eyes flashed. Battle instincts were activated; the same patterns that kept her alive could save her heart from breaking. She looked with a tactician’s mindset:

_“Oh yeah, smart guy?” Jakuzure was saying to Gamagoori. “Since when are you a gender expert?”_

“ _I’m not claiming any expertise,” Gamagoori was replying. “What you originally said was,_ ‘You want me to tell you about her?’ _It’s just simple logic to know you wouldn’t have said the wrong pronoun when you yourself already knew what person you were talking about.”_

The systems behind Satsuki’s eyes made time seem slow, made their words seem to float in the air before her, gave her time to think. And some pieces of their words were flagged specially, like they were lighting up yellow…

_Mankanshoku gasped, still reacting to Jakuzure’s answer, “you, you, you, what, really? I mean, I, I’m happy for you, or something,” her eyes wide, glancing from Jakuzure to Satsuki and back._

_“So I guess Nonon changed her answer between now and when she said ‘she’,” Matoi observed._

Satsuki scanned the text, pushing back her feelings. What was the truth? Where was there a contradiction?

What could she say?

_“But it just doesn’t make sense,” Gamagoori repeated._

_Jakuzure scowled. “The heart wants what it wants, and maybe it wants Monkey Boy!”_

Time slowed to a stop.

 _If Nonon actually likes me,_ Satsuki thought, _it’s possible she got too embarrassed to say so at the last second. In that case…_

“Hey,” Satsuki said, “could you all… repeat, exactly what you just said?”

“Um,” said Nonon. “Well, I said, Oh yeah, smart guy? Since when are you an expert on gender?”

“And I said I’m not claiming any expertise,” Ira repeated. “It’s just logical to know you wouldn’t have said the wrong pronoun when you already knew who you were talking about.”

Mako looked anxious. “I said! Um! ‘Wow, good luck with that, then, Nonon,’” she reported, and then kicked herself. It didn’t sound any better on the second try.

“Then this means Nonon changed her answer between now and when she used the female pronoun,” Ryuko repeated.

“But it just didn’t make sense,” said Ira.

“And… I said too bad, the answer’s Sanageyama,” said Nonon hesitantly.

And yes - that last phrase was the weak point.

She was just about _sure_ by now, if she looked past all her teen crush hesitance (and really, who was _she_ to hesitate?) that the answer wasn’t Sanageyama. That Nonon had intended to say Satsuki, but chickened out.

But, Satsuki realized, she couldn’t just go and _prove it wrong._ You couldn’t go and shout, “I know you like me!”; If she was wrong that would be bad, if she was right that would be worse. If you respected someone, you didn’t accuse them of something they wanted to hide.

No, there was only one bullet Satsuki could use to break that statement.

It was the truth.

“My crush is you,” said Satsuki, outwardly calm.

And there was no explosion.

There was just,

“Me?” said Nonon.

“Yes.”

There was no supernova, there was no verbal gunshot or smashing glass, there was… communication. There was Mako almost crying a little from shipper’s whiplash and Ira letting his blood pressure go back down. There was Ryuko, despite herself, anxious now for her sister. _Nonon_ _WAS_ _clearly describing Satsuki earlier, wasn’t she? And she just got cold feet and decided to lie? That must be true…_

Nonon laughed. “Oh good.” She smiled shyly. “Yeah, I, uh, lied back there. It’s you. Too.”

“Wonderful,” said Satsuki evenly. Just as if it were a business transaction. Just as if she were the boring type of adult instead of the fascinating type of teen. Just as if she didn’t really care that much. And Ryuko was almost afraid Nonon would take it that way.

But of course, if this - of all people - was whom Nonon liked, then that - of all things - must be something she could understand.

“Cool,” Nonon said, and the two of them started holding hands.

Mako passed out.


	3. Candy Chapter

When the whole group was back together – Senketsu and Uzu and so on – Mako insisted they watch a bootleg of Matilda the Musical, for reasons that, she said, would become clear shortly. They squeezed in front of the big but insufficiently big tv; up front, Houka and Shiro playfully fought over the extreme-size bag of nacho cheese doritos; in back, Nonon and Satsuki worked out where on each other’s bodies they should casually put their hands. You know, since they were together now.

To cuddle, Satsuki had to get used to somewhat-more-casual sitting positions. But Nonon could pick up the slack because she was flexible. She snuggled up against Satsuki’s straight-backed form, suspending her disbelief that this could be happening, and Satsuki slowly let tension go until she could snuggle back. They ended up with Nonon’s arms loosely around Satsuki’s lower chest and Satsuki’s arms loosely around Nonon’s waist. They leaned back into the couch, and onto each other. They scooched close, hips together, and intertwined their inside legs. Nonon’s nestled her head on Satsuki’s shoulder and Satsuki tilted her head slightly to rest sorta on top, like meshing gears.

It turned out that girls were very warm and soft.

It was all very hesitant. Very, _‘are we really doing this?’_

But they really were.

In such a situation, you could look down or up and see that your girlfriend loved holding you just as much as you loved holding her. It was pretty incredible.

Satsuki let her eyes close, because the feelings were much more interesting than the sights on the tv (sorry Mako). She felt herself breathing slowly, like she was asleep. Actually she felt both of them breathing slowly. Wow. Nonon’s texture felt like… the opposite of a bare, smooth, functional hallway. She felt complicated and self-possessed and unique. Experimentally, Satsuki gave an extra little squeeze.

Nonon felt like she was being hugged. I mean, that would work as a decent descriptor of the literal situation, but it described her feelings even better. She felt like she was being hugged by the best person in the world. By the person she trusted most. Which maybe was true.

It was weird: when you got caught up in having a crush, it felt sort of separate from the years of normal friendship you have together. But it really wasn’t separate at all, was it? She was being hugged by all those years of friendship.

Slowly, you started to have the oddest feelings and thoughts about your friend, and someday you realized you like her. And maybe you spent a while first realizing you like girls. And then… and then magic or something happened in this part… and then it turned out you both like each other together mutually and somehow dating is possible, it was really happening, and why should the concept of ‘cuddling’ even _mean_ anything only it really, really did!

Hey… didn’t this musical of Mako’s just say something about ‘miracles’? Nonon wasn’t used to those.

Satsuki lightly squeezed her about the waist. Nonon felt a rush of happiness and pressed her face into Satsuki’s neck. The following happened very gradually as the movie progressed, and the girls’ sense of time was hazy; but their legs started to rub together, enjoying the slow, soft, deliberate motion/contact; they shifted their heads to look at each other, leaning their foreheads together, & since no one should be talking during the movie, there was likewise no need to talk during this soft romantic evening, and neither felt awkward just looking at each other, smiling, communicating in the occasional unseen caress and unheard smile. The only thing they actually communicated was, ‘you’re wonderful,’ over and over, but – like the words ‘I love you’, at whatever stage they would start to say that – it didn’t get old.

Shortly, or maybe not shortly (by now, someone on the tv was singing about discipline and rebellion in school, which was maybe what Mako meant to show them, oh well, sorry Mako) they kissed.

‘Kissed’ was a nice word. ‘Smooched’ would have been too frivolous. ‘Made out’ would have been too hardcore.

They kissed.

(Even though they were two girls, they kissed. Wow.)

Nonon was the bolder of them. Her first kiss landed on Satsuki’s unmoving lips, unprepared to respond.

Since they couldn’t talk right now, she tried to make the first kiss light enough to be a question. _Should we go this far?_

 _Yes,_ said Satsuki, through a use of her lips that wasn’t talking.

First kiss.

Like a mini version of cuddling, they had to figure out how to intimately fit their bodies – their mouths – together. It was wonderful, of course, it was special and sweet, and also at the same time, lips are some rather odd pieces of body, aren’t they? Are you sure they’re the exact right shape for this? Hm, teeth are very hard. Er…

First try.

Second try.

Then, steadily, they figured out how to fit together.

_Is this your first kiss?_

_Is this your first kiss?_

Communication through kisses wasn’t very effective. Neither of them understood the question.

It was both their first kiss.

For this new level of intimacy, they held each other tighter. Their upper bodies were all pressed together; Nonon felt Satsuki’s arms move from her waist up around her own arms to lock lightly around her neck, resting on her shoulders. Her arms brushed her hair, she felt an exciting shiver, Satsuki was so close and warm. Their lips started to make tiny little pop and smack sounds as they went at it.

“Get a room,” hissed Ryuko without much malice, turning back toward them. Satsuki redirected her attention with a gentle foot to the face, & Nonon laughed, & they were in love with each other. Wow. (They did try and quiet down a little.)

Suddenly it seemed like the musical was in its ending reprise. They’d vanished another decent stretch of time not even kissing, just looking into each other’s eyes. The most saccharine, and most relaxing thing Satsuki had done… in her life, probably.

As the movie started to end, Satsuki felt for some reason that she should put her decorum back on before the others saw. Not like they’d been very stealthy back here but, still. She signaled apologetically, and Nonon understood. They separated a bit. They looked generally forward at the screen, though the activity of the past several minutes was fully evident in their expressions.

There was a dizzy moment after Matilda the Musical ended and they turned the lights back on and everyone squinted and complained for a second – where Nonon looked at the glitterbright room, the world, and was struck by the fact that she had just made out with a girl, they were dating, she made out with Satsuki...

…and the rest of reality seemed determined to _coexist with that._

Nothing else was different.

Their dating was just, a thing, that could really happen.

She felt like a white hot glowing beacon of happiness was lighting up inside her body. It filled her all the way through, pushing into her arms and legs too. She felt like her skin was glowing from the happiness. It made her sit up straight, and draw her knees together, she almost squealed like a little kid.

In a moment she would look at Satsuki again, and Satsuki would look at her, and in some way – subtle or overt – they would continue loving each other.

She couldn’t wait.


End file.
